Watson Farley edges close to £100m with double-digit turnover rise

Turnover at Watson Farley & Williams was £99.8m for the 2011-12 financial year, up 12.3 per cent on 2010-11’s £88.8m. Profit per equity partner at the firm, meanwhile, is expected to be roughly static at around £455,000. In 2010-11 it was £458,000.

In a statement, managing partner Michael Greville, said: “This year’s financial results show a respectable level of growth and, even though we did not quite reach the £100m milestone, we are pleased with this, which reflects the strength of our business model, delivering investment and finance work in our core sectors to a consistently high standard across jurisdictions.

“Our strategy continues to support expansion and during the last financial year we invested significantly, including recruiting 15 lateral partner hires and opening a new office in Hong Kong.

“This level of income represents an increase of over 70% in the four years since April 2008 and is a fitting way to end WFW’s 30th year in business.

Watson Farley has made a number of expansionist moves of the past few months. In October the firm hired a brace of asset finance partners from Berwin Leighton Paisner (5 October 2011) and established a planning practice in London with a hire from SNR Denton (6 October 2012).

Later that month, the firm established a joint venture in Singapore (11 October 2011) and in February 2012 recruited a partner from Goodwin Procter as it finalised its plans to launch an office in Hong Kong (17 February 2012).